Bed Breakfast Podcasts
2008-08-24 International criminal law
Rear Vision
Human history is littered with atrocities and genocides committed during war and for centuries civilised nations have struggled to deal with this kind of violence. International criminal law, which emerged during the 20th century, was one attempt to stop such atrocities or at least to bring the perpetrators to justice. Rear Vision takes a look at the historical roots of international criminal law and at the institutions charged with its administration. TRANSCRIPT: Annabelle Quince: Hello this is Rear Vision on ABC Radio National. I´m Annabelle Quince, and this week the story of international criminal law. Peter Cave: The power of international law is being tested in Sudan, with the possible arrest of President Omur al Bashir. Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court want judges to approve an arrest warrant over the President´s role in the death of a quarter of a million people in Darfur. Mark Colvin: The Bosnian Serb Radovan Karadzic is tonight in a detention unit of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, in The Hague. Karadzic faces trial over the 3-1/2 year siege of Sarajevo and the massacre in 1995 of about 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Szrebenitza, the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II. Annabelle Quince: History is littered with atrocities and genocides committed in the name of war. For centuries, civilised nations have struggled to deal with this kind of violence. International criminal law, which emerged during the 20th century out of treaties like the Geneva Conventions, was one attempt to stop this kind of violence, or at least to bring the perpetrators to justice. The arrest last month of Radovan Karadzic and the indictment of the Sudanese President for War Crimes, demonstrates the growing reach and power of international criminal law. Professor Bassiouni: Historically there has always been a body of law called war crimes, the laws and customs of war. Annabelle Quince: Professor Bassiouni is the distinguished research Professor of Law at de Paul University, and a former Chairman of the Security Council Commission, which investigated war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. Professor Bassiouni: And these have emerged from historic practices, going back to the fourth and fifth century BC in different civilisations, and there was a great deal of development within each civilisation about not killing people who, that is the injured, the sick, the elderly, women and children, it developed into including protection against destruction of cultural property and religious property, so the body of law, if you will, emerged from different civilisations, and for the first time in 1899 the then major powers of the world met in The Hague and developed the first Convention, codifying the customs of war. This was then embodied in the new convention of 1907, which is still the foundation of what is called customary law of armed conflict, which contains many of these principles, that then found a way in the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the two protocols of ´77. In addition to that, after World War II, we saw the development of extensions of the notion or war crimes, such as crimes against humanity, but we saw the development of a convention against genocide in 1948 based on the experiences of World War II, and subsequent to that there have been a number of treaties on international crimes. So there are actually almost 30 categories of international crimes that have developed in the last 100 years. Annabelle Quince: The Nuremberg trials after World War II are the best-known international criminal trials of the 20th century, but there were a number of trials held after World War I. Gary Bass is Associate Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. Gary Bass: There were also very big efforts at international justice held after the first World War, that there was an attempt to put the German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II on trial as a kind of war criminal, there were attempts to have war crimes trials for a whole bunch of Germans, but there were also trials that were actually held in the Ottoman Empire for Turkish officials for what today we would call the Armenian genocide. These things wind up falling apart so they´re not as well remembered. Annabelle Quince: So why did those trials fall apart? What happened then that they didn´t take off like the Nuremberg Trials did? Gary Bass: The failure of the attempts to put German war criminals on trial had to do first of all with the difficulty that the allies just did not have Kaiser Wilhelm II in their custody; he had fled into Holland, and the allies were sure that Holland would turn him over and allow them to put him on trial. But Holland actually refused, Holland was sitting right there next-door to Germany and were terrified of antagonising Germany and refused to do that, so Wilhelm II wound up living the rest of his life in exile in Holland. But there was also enormous resentment of these allied calls for war crimes trials among Germans, and not just among nationalists and right-wingers and Nazis, but also among the left-wing, that they were Social Democrats who were very upset about this demand that people who they saw as national heroes would be put on trial in front of British or French or Belgian judges, that this was sort of an affront to German dignity, they thought of people Field Marshal Hindenberg as a national hero, not somebody who deserved to be put on trial as a war criminal. So there was all this nationalist backlash within the Weimar Republic, against the idea of Allied war crimes trials. And that helped to undermine the idea that as the Weimar Republic got more and more shaky, the Allies said, `Well look, let´s just put a small number of German accused war criminals on trial.´ There´s a small series of trials which most people see as kind of a joke, and that´s pretty much the end of it. Annabelle Quince: In 1945 as World War II was coming to an end, the Allies signed a charter in London that established the Nuremberg trials. Bruce Broomhall is Professor of Law at the University of Quebec in Canada. Bruce Broomhall: The London Charter that set up the Nuremberg tribunal was adopted by the allies in London on 8th August, 1945. What was the 8th August 1945? On the one hand it was the day on which the Americans deposited their Instrument of Ratification binding them to the United Nations Charter, so the world was finished with the war, they were setting up the UN to preserve international peace and security, and in adopting the UN Charter governments were saying, `We will not use war as an instrument of our foreign policy any more. We accept that war is prohibited.´ So the UN on the very day that the Nuremberg Charter was issued, the US accepted the UN Charter; that´s kind of symbolic and interesting. But at the same time, 8th August, 1945, fell two days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and one day before the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. So the United States, even as it was accepting these norms that in principle should be binding it to a civilised standard of conduct was also taking on the mantle of defender of the free world with all of the horrible consequences and amoral power politics that that involved. So right there, in those few days in August 1945, you can see on the one hand the terrible things that would be done in the name of preserving freedom and so forth, and on the other hand the affirmation of this law that has come down to us in the Nuremberg principles. Man: Attention, Tribunal! Justice Robert Jackson (Chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials): The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating that civilisation cannot tolerate their being ignored. Gary Bass: There´s not a lot of allied enthusiasm at least in the government, for the idea of trials. There is an awful lot of enthusiasm for the idea of punishing Germans, and punishing Japanese. But the idea of punishing them through a trial is very controversial. The Soviet just want to shoot Stalin said, between 50,000 and 100,000 Germans, and given that that was what he was prepared to say to Churchill and FDR, `God knows what the actual number would have been.´ But Churchill, who´s been burned with war crimes trials from World War I, Churchill thinks that the best thing to do is for the allies to shoot between 50 and 100 senior German leaders and the United States, under Franklin Roosevelt, also initially decides that the best thing to do is to shoot a non-trivial number of German war criminals, the number they´re kicking around over 2,000 would be shot summarily without any kind of trial. It´s only after a big fight within the Roosevelt Administration that people in Washington decide that war crimes trials are the way to go, and they kind of dragged the British and the Soviets along with that. So it´s not quite right to say that there was this great enthusiasm for war crimes trials after World War II, which is how the human rights movement tends to remember it today, that there was an incredible amount of vindictiveness, an incredible amount of rage among politicians and among the public in the countries that had been fighting World War II. In fact what´s impressive is that despite all of that vindictiveness, that in the end, law was allowed to be the way in which punishment was dealt out. Justice Robert Jackson (Chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials): This inquest represents the practical efforts of four of the most mighty of nations to utilise international law to meet the greatest menace of our times. Gary Bass: You have judges from four countries, the United States, Britain, France and from the Soviet Union, and that´s the really embarrassing part is having a Soviet judge on the bench. There is no tradition of judicial independence in Stalin´s Soviet Union, the Soviet judge any time a complicated legal question comes his way, then the Soviet judge will say, `I´ve got to call Moscow and get my political instructions´. So there´s a lot of fights among the judges, unlike the present-day International Criminal Court or the War Crimes Tribunals that the UN set up for the former Yugoslavia or Rwanda. These are really the victors of the war, that you have the Americans, the Brits, the Soviets, sitting in judgment at their defeated German enemies, and that´s something that present-day international lawyers think controversial. I´m not sure exactly what the alternative was in 1945. Professor Bassiouni: Shortly after Nuremberg and Tokyo, there was an effort to establish a permanent International Criminal Court. But by then, the Cold War had set in, and that Cold War lasted until 1989, so it was impossible within the climate of a Cold War to establish an impartial tribunal that both opposing sides would accept. By the time the United Nations started considering the establishment of the permanent International Criminal Court, that was in 1994 and by then the United States had become the only major power in the world, and I think that the reluctance of the United States was that it simply wanted to control things, and it was not ready, it is still not ready, to accept an impartial court to which its own leaders would be subject to as would the case of others. Annabelle Quince: You´re with Rear Vision on ABC Radio National, Radio Australia and the web. I´m Annabelle Quince, and today we´re taking a look at the historical roots of International Criminal Law. In the post-Cold War decade of the `90s, the UN Security Council set up two temporary tribunals to deal with war crimes. Newsreader: A new type of notoriety today for the old Yugoslavia. The world has served notice that war atrocities there will not go unpunished. For the first time in its history the UN has voted to set up a Nuremberg-style War Crimes Tribunal. Reporter: Radovan Karadzic is himself one who it´s been suggested might stand trial. Another political figure is the Serbian President, Slobodan Milosovic. Gary Bass: As for the creation of the ex-Yugoslavia Tribunal, the first thing that really makes it possible is the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Cold War deadlock that the UN had experienced was no longer there, that the Russians were prepared even though this was a War Crimes Tribunal that was going to put a lot of Serbs on trial, Serbia being sort of a traditional client of Russia, the Russians decided they weren´t going to make a big fuss about that. The second thing is that there is a really, really terrible war between Serbia and Croatia in 1991 and then in Bosnia in 1992. and there are particularly horrible images coming from Bosnia in the summer of 1992 where Serb nationalists within Bosnia set up concentration camps, and there is video footage of this and it´s a huge shock to a whole lot of people. It looks, and I don´t mean at all to equate what happened in Bosnia with the Holocaust, but there is something about the sort of visual of these emaciated Bosnian prisoners standing behind barbed wire that just sends a shock through Western public opinion. And there´s real pressure being put on President Bill Clinton to do something about this. Clinton, when he was campaigning for President, said that as a Democrat in the White House he´d be much more concerned with human rights, he specifically talked about Bosnia. So Clinton is under all this pressure to actually militarily intervene in Bosnia. That´s something that he won´t do for 3-1/2 more years, but in order to be seen to be doing something to satisfy public opinion, the United States and the Europeans think, Well, you know, we could talk about having a War Crimes Tribunal. That´s something that Germany is very keen on, and it provides some symbolic statement of condemnation of what´s happening to Bosnia. Newsreader: For the first time today, one of the alleged masterminds of the carnage in Rwanda will go on trial. He´s one of more than 80,000 people currently crammed into Rwandan prisons, awaiting trial on genocide charges. Gary Bass: I mean the first thing that the Yugoslavia and Rwanda Tribunals have in common is that they´re both set up as a lesser step to actually preventing atrocities, that the genocide in Rwanda goes on without any significant Western intervention to stop it, and therefore the creation of the War Crimes Tribunal is again a bit of a token gesture to say, `Well we failed to stop the genocide; we failed to stop it when 800,000 Rwandans were murdered. We didn´t do anything about that, but look, we feel bad, we´re creating a War Crimes Tribunal.´ Bruce Broomhall: They´re focused on a particular time and a particular place and this opens them up to criticisms, right? The Serb Republic and Bosnia and Serbia itself, the Yugoslav Tribunal is a one-sided affair vindictively poised to hold them to account while letting others go etc. And like Nuremberg, that´s the price you pay for setting up an ad hoc tribunal with a limited geographical and temporal jurisdiction. On the other hand, they´re much, much better than Nuremberg. For one thing, they´re not simply set up by the countries that were involved in the war directly, and they have judges who were elected by the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council so there´s a big difference in terms of independence. At Nuremberg it was just prosecutors named by the allies, the victorious allies who stood in judgment over the war criminals, whereas with the Yugoslav tribunal and the Rwanda tribunal you´re talking about a much more professional set of affairs, professional judges relatively independently elected, subject to of course the UN system of dividing things up by region and all the power politics and the rest. But it was a quantitatively leap forward in terms of independence. At the same time, the ICTY and the ICTR have both been criticised for some would say being too slow, the expense of the trials, the millions of pages of documents that go into them, and so on, but again, I would tend to defend them on that front saying that that´s what you want an international tribunal for. National courts can really be overwhelmed by that sort of thing, but the ICTY and the ICTR could adopt rules that were specially tailored to that kind of complex case where you have hundreds of witnesses and entire archives being trucked in for the trials, and so forth. Annabelle Quince: So have the two tribunals been a success? Bruce Broomhall: Yes, well it depends who you ask. People still have very different - it depends on the consequences you draw from it. I mean obviously some people will criticise the prosecutor of the Yugoslav Tribunal for not having laid charges against NATO during the bombing of Kosovo, there were complaints of war crimes brought against NATO in that campaign. And the prosecutor of the Yugoslav Tribunal said `We´ll look into it´, she did, and she came back and said, `It´s fine, there´s nothing here for a tribunal like ours to prosecute´. And that´s been heavily criticised, that decision. At the same time, people talk about the dependency of the Yugoslav prosecutor on evidence provided by the United States and Britain in particular, states with highly developed intelligence apparatuses who had satellite surveillance for example, and other forms of surveillance that allowed arrests to be made of key suspects, or provided other forms of evidence. So there is a kind of structural bias built into the international system because of the unequal power of certain countries. And I think that´s undeniable. So that´s on the side of Should we prosecute everybody? In the ideal world we have a full Rule of Law which means that major powers are being to account as well. Yes, undoubtedly and we should be moving in that direction. But do we draw from that the consequence of nobody should be prosecuted until we have full equality? Well, I think that´s going too far. I mean it may well be that in our domestic systems that the justice system works in perfectly, that they pick more on those who are more vulnerable than on those who are more privileged and more protected by respectability and so on. That´s a problem in every justice system; it doesn´t mean that you let the guilty all go free equally. So I think there´s a - how can I say? - there´s a logical flaw there; there´s no question, we all know since 9/11 that there´s a lot to investigate in terms of the US conduct of this war against terror in terms of international crimes and torture and so on. But the fact that those crimes are very hard to prosecute doesn´t mean that others who commit similar crimes should go free. Newsreader: The agreement to set up the world´s first permanent War Crimes Tribunal was greeted with cheers, and from some delegates, cheers of relief. The historic Treaty follows five weeks of tough talks involving 160 countries. Man: The world opinion was saying that we can no longer accept that individuals or countries can with impunity engage in excessive crimes against humanity and war and genocide, and that we must be held accountable. Newsreader: Operating from The Hague, the court will deal with genocide, aggression and crimes against humanity, as well as war crimes. The final document was opposed by the US because of fears that its troops in the world´s hot spots could become the target for politically motivated charges. The new body will be able to act even when the international community dithers, as it did over Rwanda and the Balkans. Annabelle Quince: Created by the Statute of Rome, the court came into existence on 1st July, 2002. But only those nations who had signed the Rome Statute are actually subject to the court. And to date, 106 countries have signed on. Bruce Broomhall: There´s a price of setting up a permanent International Criminal Court with a number of compromises. One of the major decisions early on was that it should be established by treaty, so we decided OK, we´re going to have a treaty, now what do we put in it? And they said, `Well, if we make it just up to states to refer cases, it´s not going to get very far because states parties would ratify the treaty it´s not going to get very far because they won´t tend to complain about each other much. We´ve learned that through the UN Human Rights system. So let´s have an independent prosecutor who can investigate crimes that take place on the territory of states who´ve signed on or that are committed by the nationals of those who have signed on´. And that´s the system you have now. But in addition, they said, `Let´s have it so that the Security Council of the UN can refer cases to it as well,´, and of course as I say, that´s what happened with Sudan. So in principle, yes, it´s basically restricted to what is now the states party, but that´s 106 countries now, including Japan, including Canada, South Africa, something like half the members of the African Union, all of the countries of Latin America, Central and South America, and the Caribbean except for I think five of them. Less coverage in the Middle East, there´s only Jordan; relatively little in Asia, although even there you do have South Korea, you have Tajikistan, for example there´s various countries there, Georgia, there´s various countries in Asia that have signed on. So at 106 out of 192 countries, you´re looking at well over half of the international community. Of course it´s true that for those who haven´t signed on, you need the Security Council to approve, and that´s a political process. That means the United States and Russia and China will never be brought before the International Criminal Court because they have vetoes on the UN Security Council and they haven´t signed the Rome Statute for the ICC. So either those countries are going to be picked off one by one and encouraged to ratify the Rome Statute, or they´re going to remain outside the system. But I think anybody who saw the Rome Statute adopted in 1998 was surprised to see 106 countries having ratified it ten years later. And I think the general feeling was it would take 20 years or more to get to that level, and it was just kind of a happy convergence of post-Cold War circumstances that let the progress be made in the way that it has, so now we´re looking at What will the court actually do? Will it be effective? Will it win support for its strategies? Will it be seen as fair and effective? And so forth. And that´s the big challenge for securing the future of the International Criminal Court. Gary Bass: I think that these institutions definitely have a future. Whether or not they´re actually providing serious justice for Bosnians and Rwandans and Darfuris, that´s an open question. I think that the - sometimes lawyers are so intoxicated with the creation of international institutions that you could forget a bit what these institutions are really supposed to be doing. So there´s no doubt that the institutions will continue to be there, the question is what results they will actually be getting on the ground. Will they be indicting the right people, will they have serious charges, and even more important, will the process of charging these guys and hopefully getting some of them on trial, will that actually contribute to stability and reconciliation within these very, very divided countries? Annabelle Quince: Gary Bass, ending today´s program. And our other guests were, Bruce Broomhall and Professor Bassiouni. The sound engineer is Jenny Parsonage and archival material as always, came from ABC Archives. THEME Annabelle Quince: I´m Annabelle Quince and this is Rear Vision. Thanks for joining me. read less
Latest Episodes for this Channel
2008-08-24 International criminal law
Sat August 23 2008
Human history is littered with atrocities and genocides committed during war and for centuries civilised nations have struggled to deal with this kind of violence. International criminal law, which emerged during the 20th century, was one attempt to stop such atrocities or at least to bring the perpetrators to justice. Rear Vision takes a look at the historical roots of international criminal law and at the institutions charged with its administration. TRANSCRIPT: Annabelle Quince: Hello this is Rear Vision on ABC Radio National. I´m Annabelle Quince, and this week the story of international criminal law. Peter Cave: The power of international law is being tested in Sudan, with the possible arrest of President Omur al Bashir. Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court want judges to approve an arrest warrant over the President´s role in the death of a quarter of a million people in Darfur. Mark Colvin: The Bosnian Serb Radovan Karadzic is tonight in a detention unit of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, in The Hague. Karadzic faces trial over the 3-1/2 year siege of Sarajevo and the massacre in 1995 of about 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Szrebenitza, the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II. Annabelle Quince: History is littered with atrocities and genocides committed in the name of war. For centuries, civilised nations have struggled to deal with this kind of violence. International criminal law, which emerged during the 20th century out of treaties like the Geneva Conventions, was one attempt to stop this kind of violence, or at least to bring the perpetrators to justice. The arrest last month of Radovan Karadzic and the indictment of the Sudanese President for War Crimes, demonstrates the growing reach and power of international criminal law. Professor Bassiouni: Historically there has always been a body of law called war crimes, the laws and customs of war. Annabelle Quince: Professor Bassiouni is the distinguished research Professor of Law at de Paul University, and a former Chairman of the Security Council Commission, which investigated war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. Professor Bassiouni: And these have emerged from historic practices, going back to the fourth and fifth century BC in different civilisations, and there was a great deal of development within each civilisation about not killing people who, that is the injured, the sick, the elderly, women and children, it developed into including protection against destruction of cultural property and religious property, so the body of law, if you will, emerged from different civilisations, and for the first time in 1899 the then major powers of the world met in The Hague and developed the first Convention, codifying the customs of war. This was then embodied in the new convention of 1907, which is still the foundation of what is called customary law of armed conflict, which contains many of these principles, that then found a way in the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the two protocols of ´77. In addition to that, after World War II, we saw the development of extensions of the notion or war crimes, such as crimes against humanity, but we saw the development of a convention against genocide in 1948 based on the experiences of World War II, and subsequent to that there have been a number of treaties on international crimes. So there are actually almost 30 categories of international crimes that have developed in the last 100 years. Annabelle Quince: The Nuremberg trials after World War II are the best-known international criminal trials of the 20th century, but there were a number of trials held after World War I. Gary Bass is Associate Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. Gary Bass: There were also very big efforts at international justice held after the first World War, that there was an attempt to put the German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II on trial as a kind of war criminal, there were attempts to have war crimes trials for a whole bunch of Germans, but there were also trials that were actually held in the Ottoman Empire for Turkish officials for what today we would call the Armenian genocide. These things wind up falling apart so they´re not as well remembered. Annabelle Quince: So why did those trials fall apart? What happened then that they didn´t take off like the Nuremberg Trials did? Gary Bass: The failure of the attempts to put German war criminals on trial had to do first of all with the difficulty that the allies just did not have Kaiser Wilhelm II in their custody; he had fled into Holland, and the allies were sure that Holland would turn him over and allow them to put him on trial. But Holland actually refused, Holland was sitting right there next-door to Germany and were terrified of antagonising Germany and refused to do that, so Wilhelm II wound up living the rest of his life in exile in Holland. But there was also enormous resentment of these allied calls for war crimes trials among Germans, and not just among nationalists and right-wingers and Nazis, but also among the left-wing, that they were Social Democrats who were very upset about this demand that people who they saw as national heroes would be put on trial in front of British or French or Belgian judges, that this was sort of an affront to German dignity, they thought of people Field Marshal Hindenberg as a national hero, not somebody who deserved to be put on trial as a war criminal. So there was all this nationalist backlash within the Weimar Republic, against the idea of Allied war crimes trials. And that helped to undermine the idea that as the Weimar Republic got more and more shaky, the Allies said, `Well look, let´s just put a small number of German accused war criminals on trial.´ There´s a small series of trials which most people see as kind of a joke, and that´s pretty much the end of it. Annabelle Quince: In 1945 as World War II was coming to an end, the Allies signed a charter in London that established the Nuremberg trials. Bruce Broomhall is Professor of Law at the University of Quebec in Canada. Bruce Broomhall: The London Charter that set up the Nuremberg tribunal was adopted by the allies in London on 8th August, 1945. What was the 8th August 1945? On the one hand it was the day on which the Americans deposited their Instrument of Ratification binding them to the United Nations Charter, so the world was finished with the war, they were setting up the UN to preserve international peace and security, and in adopting the UN Charter governments were saying, `We will not use war as an instrument of our foreign policy any more. We accept that war is prohibited.´ So the UN on the very day that the Nuremberg Charter was issued, the US accepted the UN Charter; that´s kind of symbolic and interesting. But at the same time, 8th August, 1945, fell two days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and one day before the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. So the United States, even as it was accepting these norms that in principle should be binding it to a civilised standard of conduct was also taking on the mantle of defender of the free world with all of the horrible consequences and amoral power politics that that involved. So right there, in those few days in August 1945, you can see on the one hand the terrible things that would be done in the name of preserving freedom and so forth, and on the other hand the affirmation of this law that has come down to us in the Nuremberg principles. Man: Attention, Tribunal! Justice Robert Jackson (Chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials): The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating that civilisation cannot tolerate their being ignored. Gary Bass: There´s not a lot of allied enthusiasm at least in the government, for the idea of trials. There is an awful lot of enthusiasm for the idea of punishing Germans, and punishing Japanese. But the idea of punishing them through a trial is very controversial. The Soviet just want to shoot Stalin said, between 50,000 and 100,000 Germans, and given that that was what he was prepared to say to Churchill and FDR, `God knows what the actual number would have been.´ But Churchill, who´s been burned with war crimes trials from World War I, Churchill thinks that the best thing to do is for the allies to shoot between 50 and 100 senior German leaders and the United States, under Franklin Roosevelt, also initially decides that the best thing to do is to shoot a non-trivial number of German war criminals, the number they´re kicking around over 2,000 would be shot summarily without any kind of trial. It´s only after a big fight within the Roosevelt Administration that people in Washington decide that war crimes trials are the way to go, and they kind of dragged the British and the Soviets along with that. So it´s not quite right to say that there was this great enthusiasm for war crimes trials after World War II, which is how the human rights movement tends to remember it today, that there was an incredible amount of vindictiveness, an incredible amount of rage among politicians and among the public in the countries that had been fighting World War II. In fact what´s impressive is that despite all of that vindictiveness, that in the end, law was allowed to be the way in which punishment was dealt out. Justice Robert Jackson (Chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials): This inquest represents the practical efforts of four of the most mighty of nations to utilise international law to meet the greatest menace of our times. Gary Bass: You have judges from four countries, the United States, Britain, France and from the Soviet Union, and that´s the really embarrassing part is having a Soviet judge on the bench. There is no tradition of judicial independence in Stalin´s Soviet Union, the Soviet judge any time a complicated legal question comes his way, then the Soviet judge will say, `I´ve got to call Moscow and get my political instructions´. So there´s a lot of fights among the judges, unlike the present-day International Criminal Court or the War Crimes Tribunals that the UN set up for the former Yugoslavia or Rwanda. These are really the victors of the war, that you have the Americans, the Brits, the Soviets, sitting in judgment at their defeated German enemies, and that´s something that present-day international lawyers think controversial. I´m not sure exactly what the alternative was in 1945. Professor Bassiouni: Shortly after Nuremberg and Tokyo, there was an effort to establish a permanent International Criminal Court. But by then, the Cold War had set in, and that Cold War lasted until 1989, so it was impossible within the climate of a Cold War to establish an impartial tribunal that both opposing sides would accept. By the time the United Nations started considering the establishment of the permanent International Criminal Court, that was in 1994 and by then the United States had become the only major power in the world, and I think that the reluctance of the United States was that it simply wanted to control things, and it was not ready, it is still not ready, to accept an impartial court to which its own leaders would be subject to as would the case of others. Annabelle Quince: You´re with Rear Vision on ABC Radio National, Radio Australia and the web. I´m Annabelle Quince, and today we´re taking a look at the historical roots of International Criminal Law. In the post-Cold War decade of the `90s, the UN Security Council set up two temporary tribunals to deal with war crimes. Newsreader: A new type of notoriety today for the old Yugoslavia. The world has served notice that war atrocities there will not go unpunished. For the first time in its history the UN has voted to set up a Nuremberg-style War Crimes Tribunal. Reporter: Radovan Karadzic is himself one who it´s been suggested might stand trial. Another political figure is the Serbian President, Slobodan Milosovic. Gary Bass: As for the creation of the ex-Yugoslavia Tribunal, the first thing that really makes it possible is the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Cold War deadlock that the UN had experienced was no longer there, that the Russians were prepared even though this was a War Crimes Tribunal that was going to put a lot of Serbs on trial, Serbia being sort of a traditional client of Russia, the Russians decided they weren´t going to make a big fuss about that. The second thing is that there is a really, really terrible war between Serbia and Croatia in 1991 and then in Bosnia in 1992. and there are particularly horrible images coming from Bosnia in the summer of 1992 where Serb nationalists within Bosnia set up concentration camps, and there is video footage of this and it´s a huge shock to a whole lot of people. It looks, and I don´t mean at all to equate what happened in Bosnia with the Holocaust, but there is something about the sort of visual of these emaciated Bosnian prisoners standing behind barbed wire that just sends a shock through Western public opinion. And there´s real pressure being put on President Bill Clinton to do something about this. Clinton, when he was campaigning for President, said that as a Democrat in the White House he´d be much more concerned with human rights, he specifically talked about Bosnia. So Clinton is under all this pressure to actually militarily intervene in Bosnia. That´s something that he won´t do for 3-1/2 more years, but in order to be seen to be doing something to satisfy public opinion, the United States and the Europeans think, Well, you know, we could talk about having a War Crimes Tribunal. That´s something that Germany is very keen on, and it provides some symbolic statement of condemnation of what´s happening to Bosnia. Newsreader: For the first time today, one of the alleged masterminds of the carnage in Rwanda will go on trial. He´s one of more than 80,000 people currently crammed into Rwandan prisons, awaiting trial on genocide charges. Gary Bass: I mean the first thing that the Yugoslavia and Rwanda Tribunals have in common is that they´re both set up as a lesser step to actually preventing atrocities, that the genocide in Rwanda goes on without any significant Western intervention to stop it, and therefore the creation of the War Crimes Tribunal is again a bit of a token gesture to say, `Well we failed to stop the genocide; we failed to stop it when 800,000 Rwandans were murdered. We didn´t do anything about that, but look, we feel bad, we´re creating a War Crimes Tribunal.´ Bruce Broomhall: They´re focused on a particular time and a particular place and this opens them up to criticisms, right? The Serb Republic and Bosnia and Serbia itself, the Yugoslav Tribunal is a one-sided affair vindictively poised to hold them to account while letting others go etc. And like Nuremberg, that´s the price you pay for setting up an ad hoc tribunal with a limited geographical and temporal jurisdiction. On the other hand, they´re much, much better than Nuremberg. For one thing, they´re not simply set up by the countries that were involved in the war directly, and they have judges who were elected by the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council so there´s a big difference in terms of independence. At Nuremberg it was just prosecutors named by the allies, the victorious allies who stood in judgment over the war criminals, whereas with the Yugoslav tribunal and the Rwanda tribunal you´re talking about a much more professional set of affairs, professional judges relatively independently elected, subject to of course the UN system of dividing things up by region and all the power politics and the rest. But it was a quantitatively leap forward in terms of independence. At the same time, the ICTY and the ICTR have both been criticised for some would say being too slow, the expense of the trials, the millions of pages of documents that go into them, and so on, but again, I would tend to defend them on that front saying that that´s what you want an international tribunal for. National courts can really be overwhelmed by that sort of thing, but the ICTY and the ICTR could adopt rules that were specially tailored to that kind of complex case where you have hundreds of witnesses and entire archives being trucked in for the trials, and so forth. Annabelle Quince: So have the two tribunals been a success? Bruce Broomhall: Yes, well it depends who you ask. People still have very different - it depends on the consequences you draw from it. I mean obviously some people will criticise the prosecutor of the Yugoslav Tribunal for not having laid charges against NATO during the bombing of Kosovo, there were complaints of war crimes brought against NATO in that campaign. And the prosecutor of the Yugoslav Tribunal said `We´ll look into it´, she did, and she came back and said, `It´s fine, there´s nothing here for a tribunal like ours to prosecute´. And that´s been heavily criticised, that decision. At the same time, people talk about the dependency of the Yugoslav prosecutor on evidence provided by the United States and Britain in particular, states with highly developed intelligence apparatuses who had satellite surveillance for example, and other forms of surveillance that allowed arrests to be made of key suspects, or provided other forms of evidence. So there is a kind of structural bias built into the international system because of the unequal power of certain countries. And I think that´s undeniable. So that´s on the side of Should we prosecute everybody? In the ideal world we have a full Rule of Law which means that major powers are being to account as well. Yes, undoubtedly and we should be moving in that direction. But do we draw from that the consequence of nobody should be prosecuted until we have full equality? Well, I think that´s going too far. I mean it may well be that in our domestic systems that the justice system works in perfectly, that they pick more on those who are more vulnerable than on those who are more privileged and more protected by respectability and so on. That´s a problem in every justice system; it doesn´t mean that you let the guilty all go free equally. So I think there´s a - how can I say? - there´s a logical flaw there; there´s no question, we all know since 9/11 that there´s a lot to investigate in terms of the US conduct of this war against terror in terms of international crimes and torture and so on. But the fact that those crimes are very hard to prosecute doesn´t mean that others who commit similar crimes should go free. Newsreader: The agreement to set up the world´s first permanent War Crimes Tribunal was greeted with cheers, and from some delegates, cheers of relief. The historic Treaty follows five weeks of tough talks involving 160 countries. Man: The world opinion was saying that we can no longer accept that individuals or countries can with impunity engage in excessive crimes against humanity and war and genocide, and that we must be held accountable. Newsreader: Operating from The Hague, the court will deal with genocide, aggression and crimes against humanity, as well as war crimes. The final document was opposed by the US because of fears that its troops in the world´s hot spots could become the target for politically motivated charges. The new body will be able to act even when the international community dithers, as it did over Rwanda and the Balkans. Annabelle Quince: Created by the Statute of Rome, the court came into existence on 1st July, 2002. But only those nations who had signed the Rome Statute are actually subject to the court. And to date, 106 countries have signed on. Bruce Broomhall: There´s a price of setting up a permanent International Criminal Court with a number of compromises. One of the major decisions early on was that it should be established by treaty, so we decided OK, we´re going to have a treaty, now what do we put in it? And they said, `Well, if we make it just up to states to refer cases, it´s not going to get very far because states parties would ratify the treaty it´s not going to get very far because they won´t tend to complain about each other much. We´ve learned that through the UN Human Rights system. So let´s have an independent prosecutor who can investigate crimes that take place on the territory of states who´ve signed on or that are committed by the nationals of those who have signed on´. And that´s the system you have now. But in addition, they said, `Let´s have it so that the Security Council of the UN can refer cases to it as well,´, and of course as I say, that´s what happened with Sudan. So in principle, yes, it´s basically restricted to what is now the states party, but that´s 106 countries now, including Japan, including Canada, South Africa, something like half the members of the African Union, all of the countries of Latin America, Central and South America, and the Caribbean except for I think five of them. Less coverage in the Middle East, there´s only Jordan; relatively little in Asia, although even there you do have South Korea, you have Tajikistan, for example there´s various countries there, Georgia, there´s various countries in Asia that have signed on. So at 106 out of 192 countries, you´re looking at well over half of the international community. Of course it´s true that for those who haven´t signed on, you need the Security Council to approve, and that´s a political process. That means the United States and Russia and China will never be brought before the International Criminal Court because they have vetoes on the UN Security Council and they haven´t signed the Rome Statute for the ICC. So either those countries are going to be picked off one by one and encouraged to ratify the Rome Statute, or they´re going to remain outside the system. But I think anybody who saw the Rome Statute adopted in 1998 was surprised to see 106 countries having ratified it ten years later. And I think the general feeling was it would take 20 years or more to get to that level, and it was just kind of a happy convergence of post-Cold War circumstances that let the progress be made in the way that it has, so now we´re looking at What will the court actually do? Will it be effective? Will it win support for its strategies? Will it be seen as fair and effective? And so forth. And that´s the big challenge for securing the future of the International Criminal Court. Gary Bass: I think that these institutions definitely have a future. Whether or not they´re actually providing serious justice for Bosnians and Rwandans and Darfuris, that´s an open question. I think that the - sometimes lawyers are so intoxicated with the creation of international institutions that you could forget a bit what these institutions are really supposed to be doing. So there´s no doubt that the institutions will continue to be there, the question is what results they will actually be getting on the ground. Will they be indicting the right people, will they have serious charges, and even more important, will the process of charging these guys and hopefully getting some of them on trial, will that actually contribute to stability and reconciliation within these very, very divided countries? Annabelle Quince: Gary Bass, ending today´s program. And our other guests were, Bruce Broomhall and Professor Bassiouni. The sound engineer is Jenny Parsonage and archival material as always, came from ABC Archives. THEME Annabelle Quince: I´m Annabelle Quince and this is Rear Vision. Thanks for joining me. read less
2008-08-17 Georgia revisited
Sat August 16 2008
What has caused the violent tug of war between Russia and Georgia over Abkhazia and South Ossetia and why are these two regions demanding independence? Rear Vision revisits the setting for a hot version of the Cold War. This program was first broadcast on 18 May 2008 TRANSCRIPT: Keri Phillips: You´re listening to ABC Radio National. This is Rear Vision. I´m Keri Phillips. Reporter: On the main road out of Vladikavkaz, heavy weaponry rumbles ominously towards the Georgian border, about 70 kilometres away. Mikhail Saakashvili: What we are seeing in the areas is classical Balkan-type and World War II-type ethnic cleansing and purification campaign. George W Bush: We expect Russia to meet its committment to cease all military activities in Georgia and we expect all Russian forces that entered Georgia in recent days to withdraw from that country. Keri Phillips: The violence in Georgia has its roots in the break-up of the Soviet Union. Since 1991, when the Republic of Georgia declared its autonomy from the Soviet Union, Abkhazians and South Ossetians have been agitating for their own independence. Georgian opposition to their demands created tension with Russia, in turn drawing in the United States, a close ally of Georgia´s current government. These echoes of the Cold War found material form when Georgian forces launched a surprise attack on South Ossetia on 7th August and was in turn invaded by Russia. Today, to fill in the background to these events, Rear Vision revisits a program we ran in May on the Republic of Georgia. Although Georgia had enjoyed a brief interlude of independence after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, it was incorporated by force into the Soviet Union in 1922. Lying where Eastern Europe meets Western Asia, along Russia´s southern border with Turkey, it became the breadbasket of the USSR and for many Russians a mecca of cultural riches and cosmopolitan style. But in the late 1980s as the Soviet Union neared collapse, growing Georgian nationalism drove demonstrators onto the streets of the capital, Tbilisi. These days Dr Kirill Nourzhanov is an academic at the ANU, but in April, 1989, when a peaceful demonstration in Tbilisi ended in a massacre, he was an 18 year old conscript in the Red Army, serving in Georgia. Kirill Nourzhanov: I happened to be deployed to a little place, a little garrison next to Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia at a very tumultuous time for the Soviet Union when all sorts of nationalist movements were springing up left, right and centre in the Soviet Union, and Georgia was not an exception. So a very important part of our mission as Soviet soldiers was to pacify those kinds of movements, and it´s a very traumatic day in the history of the Soviet Union and Georgia in particular, 9th April, 1989 when the Soviet Army was used en masse to quell demonstrations in Tbilisi. And my unit did participate in that event, and I must say it was not very pleasant for us, you know, 18-year-old raw recruits, to stand in line and to pretty much beat up those demonstrators. Of course we didn´t understand what was going on. It was the first time that the Soviet Army was actually used against the domestic enemy, and for us it was a sign of deep crisis because the Red Army, the pride and glory of the Soviet people, was never before then used against demonstrators, it was always against an external enemy, and now we discovered to our consternation that Mikhail Gorbachev is putting soldiers to stem disturbances on the home front. Keri Phillips: Not even the Red Army could hold the Soviet Union together but even before it was dissolved in December, 1991, Georgia had declared its independence. Reporter: Mikhail Gorbachev´s vision of a new united Soviet Union seemed evermore unattainable today. Georgians poured onto the streets of their capital, Tbilisi to celebrate the declaration of independence. In a referendum two weeks ago, 98% of them voted to leave the Soviet Union. Today, parliament acted on their wishes. Kirill Nourzhanov: The problem was that it did not dispose of this hard-won sovereignty in a very efficient manner, because once Georgia received if not de jure, then de facto independence from the Soviet Union, there was an immediate rise in factionalism, because Georgians as Highlanders are an extremely proud people, and also an extremely divided people, lots of clans and tribes and regional loyalties. And they all clashed against each other in those heady days independence. And the Georgian leader who rose to the top as a result of this nationalist surge, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, could never consolidate his rule in the late 1980s and 1990. Almost immediately he had to face a lot of rivals who challenged his supremacy. And in December, 1991 this internecine struggle reached a climax because there was a coup d´etat in Tbilisi and Zviad Gamsakhurdia was violently removed from power and went into hiding, but he continued to resist from his patrimony and that kind of started a new cycle in Georgian political history, now an independent nation, but an independent nation in the conditions of civil war. So the history of Georgia between 1989 and I´d say 1993 can be best described by these words: `Incessant tumult, interminable struggle, a nation that is riven by so many contradictions we can´t really describe it as a consolidated modern independent nation-state.´ Eventually the majority of political elites in Georgia realised that well this case must stop and they couldn´t really develop a way out, talking among themselves, so the only recourse that they had at their disposal, and which they took was to invite a senior statesman by the name of Eduard Shevardnadze, the former Foreign Minister of Mikhail Gorbachev and before then the Party Secretary of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1993 he was living happily in Moscow in retirement, and he was sent a message by a couple of major factions in Tbilisi, `Come back, save us, lead us out of this trouble.´ Newsreader: Eduard Shevardnadze, the former Soviet Foreign Minister, is emerging as the hero of his homeland, Georgia. The country is facing a secessionist movement by Abkhazians who´ve captured the Western city of Sukhumi which they´re calling their capital. Mr Shevardnadze defied the separatists and stayed in the city throughout an 11-day battle, trying to shore up Georgian defences and pleading with Russia for help. After the fall of Sukhumi overnight, he insisted on remaining in a nearby town to supervise the evacuation of refugees to the capital, Tbilisi. Keri Phillips: As well as crime and corruption, Shevardnadze had inherited the separatist conflicts in the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia which had been incorporated in Georgia´s territorial boundaries by Stalin in the 1930s. Kirill Nourzhanov: Well yes, those conflicts. They have a very long history. Georgia is a country that is located in the Caucasus, and the Caucasus, well as the Caucasians, the Armenians, or Azerbaijanis or even the Chechens would readily tell you, is the most heterogenous place on the face of this planet. Sometimes there are villages situated nearby and the people in those villages would not understand each other because they speak totally different languages. Georgia is no exception to this extreme pattern of mosaics of ethnicity and religion and to actually complicate things even further, at some stage Abkhazia was a sovereign republic within the Soviet Union, having exactly the same constitutional position as Georgia itself, so they were equals. The Abkhazs never really forgave Georgians this historical injustice, and when they saw an opportunity for themselves to reassert their sovereign independent rights, they did this. Tumult in Abkhazia began even before the Soviet Union collapsed, so the events of 1989 in Tbilisi, were in some parts caused by the resentment of ethnic Georgians against the Abkhazs´ growing independence which in their opinion was sanctioned by Mikhail Gorbachev. So there´s a long history of misunderstanding, grievances, otherness involved on both sides. But to put it simply, the Abkhazs and the South Ossetians do not believe themselves to be part of the Georgian ethnos, they do not want to be part of Georgia, and of course, they took advantage of the sorry state in which the Georgian nation-state was in the late 1980s and 1990s to reassert their independence. So the process of separation was extremely bloody, was marked by ethnic cleansing, wholesale pillaging of ethnic Georgians who still remained in Abkhazia, so the number of displaced people, ethnic Georgians who were kicked out of Abkhazia is disputed, but perhaps somewhere between 150,000 to 250,000 people would be the correct guess. Then there were other attempts by the Georgian leadership to reclaim Abkhazia and to turn the tide but not very successfully. Finally, Russia moved in and after a series of negotiations and failed truces, the cease-fire agreement was brokered in 1994 that holds until today. So that´s Abkhazia. The situation in South Ossetia was pretty much the same, that the parliament of South Ossetia, the Supreme Soviet moves to reassert sovereignty in 1990. The nationalist government sitting in Tbilisi tries to counter this move, and Zviad Gamsakhurdia abolishes the autonomy of South Ossetia outright, and tries to recapture the territory by force. South Ossetians successfully resist with the help of local Russian military commanders and the situation becomes deadlocked. Finally Russia moves in, brokers a cease-fire agreement and the conflict remains frozen until today. Keri Phillips: Stephen Jones is Professor of Russian Studies at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. Stephen Jones: Georgia considers these areas historically and territorially part of sovereign Georgia, and although they´ve not had much success in any peaceful negotiations in returning these territories, they are not willing to give them up. Politically those sorts of policies would probably be suicide for most Georgian leaders, the idea that they could give up these territories. The other thing is there´s a moral issue here: 250,000 or so Georgians were expelled from Abkhazia. They had to leave their homes as a result of the war there in 1993, and there is this moral obligation to return the refugees to Abkhazia and also to South Ossetia. So at the moment, when you think about Abkhazia and South Ossetia, this has been going on since 1993, let´s say, when the Georgians lost the war against the Abkhazians. It´s more and more looking like a Cyprus syndrome, where this frozen conflict just goes on and on and there doesn´t really seem to be a solution. Keri Phillips: Following a crisis involving allegations of ballot fraud in the 2003 parliamentary elections, tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets, demanding Eduard Shevardnadze´s resignation. Student demonstrators handed red roses to the soldiers, thus naming the first of the so-called `coloured revolutions´. Stephen Jones: Shevardnadze was the right man at the right time when he arrived in Georgia in March of 1992. The country was undergoing civil war and he would basically save the ship of state, and he did do that. But I think the problem with Shevardnadze as very often with too many leaders, is that he stayed too long. It turned out, although he was very good in a crisis situation, he was not good at managing the economy. He was not good at introducing reform and implementing reform. He really operated as an old Soviet-style leader. Although he had declared himself a Democrat, he still had the old Soviet habits, so he ruled through clients and networks, and those clients and networks were very corrupt. So he really never overcame the problem of reforming and dismantling the old Soviet cadres and ending corruption. And essentially the movement against him was an anti-corruption movement, and it culminated in November 2003 with what we now know as the Rose Revolution. Keri Phillips: Eduard Shevardnadze, a man who had ruled Georgia for more than 30 years in total, as its Soviet-era Communist Party boss and its longest-serving post-independence president, was replaced by Mikheil Saakashvili, a pro-western reformer, who was elected president in 2004. His pursuit of membership of both the European Union and especially NATO, the West´s collective defence alliance, has strained relations with Russia. Stephen Jones: The new direction that Georgia was taking after 2003 was one looking very clearly towards the West. The intention was quite clear and declaration was made that Georgia wanted to join NATO. This, as far as Russia was concerned, was a security threat. Russia feels that it´s being encircled by NATO powers. We of course saw the massive expansion of NATO in the 1990s during the Clinton Administration, so much so that the Baltic republics, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, became members of NATO. And Russia clearly doesn´t want to see any more NATO members especially on its very sensitive southern border, where Georgia is located, next to Armenia, Azerbaijan, and then beyond that of course, is Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan. So this is a very sensitive, geographical area for Russia, and it doesn´t want to see too much Western or NATO involvement, let´s say. Reporter: Simmering tensions have flared into a military skirmish between Georgia and Russia; video filmed by the Georgian Interior Ministry, appears to show Russian peacekeepers beating and detaining Georgian policemen. Each side has accused the other of provoking the incident, it drew a personal and very public intervention from the Georgian President, who berated the Russian soldiers at the scene. LANGUAGE Translation: This morning you have attacked the checkpoint and violated your mandate, all international norms. You have beaten up our policemen who were protecting peaceful citizens here. Stephen Jones: Russia has done many rather provocative things. You could argue that Georgians maybe have not helped themselves in the sense that the new government at least that came into power after 2003, is rather brash, it´s youthful, and they´ve taken actions themselves that might naturally provoke Russia. So I think it´s in some sense two sided. But Russia has acted as what you might call a spoiler state in the Caucasus. That is, it´s not in Russia´s power to invade Georgia or occupy it, there are certain laws, international laws let´s say, that it abides by. So it can´t take such dramatic action as that, but it´s done other things that have clearly destabilised or the intention at least has been to destabilise Georgia, to keep it weak, and if it´s weak, then Russia can maintain its influence in the region. So for example, it hasn´t abided by its mandate to encourage the peaceful return of displaced Georgians to these areas, and there have been provocative flights of Russian planes in this area, shooting down Georgian drones, or even bombing Georgian territory, subsequently claiming that it was an accident. So these sorts of actions, they´ve also made it very easy for Abkhazians and South Ossetians to become Russian citizens. That means then that Russia has a special claim in these areas because now it can say Well, these are Russian citizens now, and we have a right to protect them. So it´s a very complicated situation, and Russia is, according to the Georgians, annexing these areas by stealth. Keri Phillips: In January this year, President Saakashvili won a definitive, if disputed, victory in presidential elections. His meetings with George Bush at the White House in March reaffirmed US backing for Georgia´s membership bid at the NATO Summit in Bucharest in April. President Bush´s support of Georgia´s aspirations reflected not only the geographic significance of the Republic, but also US gratitude for the Georgia military contribution in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kirill Nourzhanov: I mean we living in Australia kind of position ourselves as the most valuable ally of the United States beyond NATO, but if figures are any indication, then Georgia is by far more important to the Americans than Australia. Suffice it to mention that right now there are about 2,000 combat troops from Georgia deployed in Iraq, and 500 are on their way to Afghanistan, so proportionately speaking, about one-third of the entire Georgian army is now pulling its weight on behalf of the United States. So of course, once Georgia, or rather it´s President, Mikheil Saakashvili, had proved himself such a great friend and ally, it would be quite impolite on behalf of the United States not to support Mikheil Saakashvili in his domestic endeavours and his attempts to resolve those issues of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Keri Phillips: If Georgia does become a member of NATO, is it possible that the West could become militarily involved in Georgia´s attempts to regain the rebel provinces? Kirill Nourzhanov: Absolutely. And this is the scariest possibility of them all that what can happen if such a scenario does materialise, is that Russia will become involved. If Georgia applies for support, not just global support but real support with troops and equipment to NATO, to the West, well the West would be hard pressed to ignore such a request and would also become entangled. So again, the local conflict will become very quickly a regional conflict and then perhaps even an international conflict. Keri Phillips: Despite President Bush´s support, Georgia was not allowed to move closer to NATO membership at the summit in April, evidence of the misgivings held by other Western leaders. In fact, although the international community doesn´t recognise the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the West´s response to Georgia´s desire to reclaim them has been muted. Stephen Jones: The reaction has been rather mild, but Russia´s a very important regional power, it´s a very important power because of course of its nuclear capacity and because of it´s place on the United Nations Security Council, so it´s a great power, and of course it also supplies 30% to 40% of Europe´s energy, both gas and oil. So it´s a country that neither the Europeans nor the Americans can provoke too much, let´s say. So when they´re thinking about Well how much can we do for Georgia without really upsetting Russia, it´s limited. So both the United States and Europe, when Russia does commit these provocative actions, they will come out with statements, they will condemn it, but not much else. I don´t think that NATO or the United States or the European Union definitely is not going to come out on a limb for the sake of Georgia. Georgia is important to Europe and to the United States; the United States has a military presence in Georgia, it´s important strategically because it borders the northern Middle East, and Georgia is an important ally in the sense that it shares the democratic values of most European countries, and the United States. So in those senses, Georgia is important, but it is a very small country, it´s about 4-1/2-million people, and Russia is a very big country. When the West thinks of these two countries, obviously the balance is not in Georgia´s favour. You know, I think the Georgian government understands that any attempt to take back these areas militarily would be a disaster for Georgia. According to international law and the international community recognises the sovereignty of Georgia in these regions, but should Georgia decide to use military force, well firstly it might lose. Russia has said that it now has Russian citizens to defend in these regions, so Russia might get involved. Secondly, if Georgia decided to do something like that, it would never get into NATO, and thirdly, if it decided to do something like that, it would destroy the Georgian economy which over the last few years, has turned around, and is making quite significant progress with quite a bit of foreign direct investment in Georgia. So there are good reasons why the Georgian government can´t just turn around and say, `Look, now we have an American-trained military force of about 25,000 personnel, why don´t we just take it back? Why don´t we just take Abkhazia back and South Ossetia. They realise that potentially it could be really disastrous. Keri Phillips: And now of course we´ve seen just how disastrous. That was Stephen Jones, Professor of Russian Studies at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, speaking when this program was recorded in May this year. We also heard from Dr Kirill Nourzhanov, who teaches at the Australian National University. Rear Vision´s technical producer is Jenny Parsonage. I´m Keri Phillips, `bye for now. read less
2008-08-10 Cuba: socialism with salsa
Sat August 09 2008
For almost 50 years Fidel Castro - and now his brother Raul - have ruled Cuba. Rear Vision looks at the origins of the Cuban Revolution and the relationship between this tiny Caribbean island and the USA, its powerful and hostile neighbour. TRANSCRIPT: Keri Phillips: This is Rear Vision on ABC Radio National. I´m Keri Phillips. AM Presenter: After half a century in power, Fidel Castro is stepping down as Cuba´s President and Commander-in-Chief. Reporter: Fidel Castro is a revolutionary icon famous for his rumpled green military fatigues, his beard, his long speeches, and the cigars he once smoked. CASTRO SPEECH Reporter: During his 49 years in power he´s dodged everything his enemies threw at him: a US invasion bid; assassination plots; and a trade embargo. Keri Phillips: But not even he could beat ill-health and old age. Fidel Castro announced his retirement in February this year. And although he´s handed over the reins to his brother Raul who, at 77, is younger and healthier, the end of the Castro regime can´t be far away. I took advantage of a recent trip to the United States to meet two Americans with a long association with Cuba: Sandra Levinson, who´s the Executive Director of the Center for Cuban Studies, a non-profit educational institution in New York, and Dr Wayne Smith, who was working in Latin America for the US State Department when the revolution happened in Cuba and became Chief of Mission at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana during the 1970s. Today´s he´s the Director of the Cuba Program at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C. I wanted to know what Cuba was like at the time of the revolution and why this tiny Caribbean island has remained a thorn in the side of its powerful neighbour, the United States of America. Sandra Levinson says that although the Republic of Cuba had gained formal independence from Spain in 1902, in the 1950s it was a US colony in all but name. Sandra Levinson: You know, most of the large companies were owned by Americans; most of the upper class and upper middle class was associated one way or another with US companies, US businesses; many of the poorest people who worked for sugar centrales and for nickel mining companies, their employers were Americans, right? Politically it was definitely an outpost of the United States and I think in many other ways a kind of clandestine underground sex-populated, you know people would go to Cuba for their abortions, people would go to Cuba to see the kind of nightlife they couldn´t see in the United States. It was a weekend place, and of course it was one of the reasons the revolution was made. So there was incredible poverty, you know in the countryside the statistics are frightening. I mean there was such a high percentage of children under the age of five who died from parasites. And all of those statistics come out of the United States Department of Agriculture, these are not statistics invented by the revolution after 1959 to justify the revolution. So the situation was a pitiful one for most people in Cuba. And of course the population was much smaller than it is now, the population was under 7-million; today it´s over 11-million. Havana was a city of 1-million which doubled in population almost immediately after the revolution because all of the most poor found that finally they could leave their poverty-stricken lands and move into the city even though they had no housing, they had no water, you know. So it´s kind of hard to summarise in just a few words what Cuba was like before the revolution, but it had a very shiny exterior, I would say. I have a personal collection of old `Life´ magazines and old `National Geographics´ that show for the most part only the shiny, classy part of Havana. You know, the new buildings in Verdado, the new homes in Miramar, the central Havana shopping areas, and only once in a while if they were doing a story for example in National Geographic on sugar cane production, then you would see the terrible hovels in which people lived in the countryside, and the poverty in which they lived. So it was a country of enormous extremes, and ripe for revolution, I would say. Keri Phillips: The post World War II period in Cuba was a time of political unrest with disputes over national independence and social justice underpinned by violence and shootings. Castro abandoned his legal career in the early 1950s and formed an underground organisation of supporters to overthrow the dictatorship of General Batista. A Communist Party with links to the Soviet Union had been active in Cuban politics since the 1920s. In fact it had supported the Batista dictatorship. Castro had belonged to a reformist party founded by the strongly anti-communist Eduardo Chibas. The short and relatively bloodless guerrilla campaign in late 1958 combined with growing opposition from the Catholic church and the urban elite, pushed Batista into exile. Castro became Prime Minister of Cuba in February, 1959. Fidel Castro: I want all America know the truth, and I am inviting at this moment newsmen of all North, Central and South America, and I want that hundreds of you may come here where there is an absolutely free press, so that they know what the people of Cuba think, and what the people of Cuba want. Wayne Smith: The US reaction was one of surprise. Difficult to understand how we could have been surprised. It was clear that it was coming. But one of surprise. And at least initially, a willingness to try to meet the Cuban government half way, to try to work out a friendly relationship with the Cuban government. The Cuban government´s objectives, however, were such that that really was not feasible. I mean Castro came to power saying that he wanted to free Latin America of US domination and influence in the same way that Simon Bolivar had freed it of Spanish influence and domination. Well the United States was not likely to accept that with equanimity, and certainly not in that period. Eisenhower and the Cold War, John Foster Dulles and so forth. So for the first few months, I would say the first six months, it was a rocky but a tenable relationship. Castro moreover, had appointed a series of moderates to the government. The US got along reasonably well with them, but by mid-1959 Castro was replacing them with more revolutionary figures and was taking a more frontal position, shall we say, against the United States. That went by the boards and relations quickly deteriorated. Sandra Levinson: Well of course the first things they did were what frightened the United States and what made them start calling Fidel Castro a Communist. That is, land reform. The Agrarian Reform Law was very, very important; it basically changed the way land was going to be owned and distributed and for the first time, land was going to be broken up, all of the owners, the US owners and large Cuban landowners were out. That was the Agrarian Reform Law. Then there was the Urban Reform Law, which got rid of landlords basically. You could no longer own property and rent it out. You were allowed to own one place in the city and one place in the country or the beach. In other words, you personally could have two homes but you could not be a landlord. So clearly, that was the end of a whole part of society; it is not that the Cubans did not pay compensation. I had a good friend there whose mother owned a lot of apartment buildings, and he decided to remain, he wanted to remain because he was an artist, an intellectual, a writer, and he had observed the poverty in the countryside when he went to take part in a literacy campaign in 1961. And that convinced him that he would not leave Cuba, he never wanted to see children with parasites dying with worms coming out of their stomachs. And his mother decided that `OK, if my son is going to remain, I will remain too.´ And she had no idea what was going to happen to all of her buildings. Well of course they were taken away from her. But to the end of her life, and to the end of his life, they were paid compensation by the Cuban government. Now you and I might say it was minimal compensation compared to what they would have gotten as landlords, but it was more than enough for them, they felt that they were compensated fairly. Keri Phillips: In early 1960, the US thought that negotiations were possible and talks were set up between the two countries, but as teams were being appointed, the Soviet Deputy Premier arrived to sign a number of agreements with the Cubans. The US concluded that Castro had made a decision to go with the Soviets and in March, President Eisenhower signed a finding, authorising the CIA to act to overthrow the Castro government. Wayne Smith: Things went steadily downhill with the United States cancelling Cuba´s sugar quota. Cuba in retaliation, nationalising US firms. It finally came to a point January 2nd of 1961 when Castro had given a speech saying he was going to insist that the US embassy be reduced to a small number of people. The State Department would not accept that and so we broke relations with Cuba. You can say Castro deliberately provoked it, he knew it would bring about a rupture in relations and that was acceptable to him. So we broke relations, sailed out of the harbour January 4th. Of course that was followed by the Bay of Pigs adventure, which I think was sort of a signal that somehow the United States was not up to handling Cuba in a rational way. How could you possibly expect to win by putting 1200 relatively poorly armed exiles ashore against a regular army of 60,000 armed with Soviet tanks and artillery and backed by a militia force of 100,000? So of course they were overwhelmed in two days. What did we expect? Lord knows. OK the Bay of Pigs and then from that point forward it was animosity and hostility and so forth. Interestingly though, the Bay of Pigs was followed by the Soviet missile crisis. Until that point, until the Bay of Pigs, Castro had not declared Cuba to be a Socialist State, but as we sent the exiles ashore, he rather assumed the 1st and 2nd marine divisions would follow shortly, and the only way he was going to survive was by getting Soviet assistance. And the only way to get Soviet assistance was by declaring Cuba to be a Socialist state, which he then did, the night before the Bay of Pigs invasion, which he already knew was coming. OK, Cuba is now a Socialist State. That gets Khrushchev thinking. `Well if Cuba´s a Socialist State we must be able to get some benefit from that. We don´t place nuclear missiles in neutral countries but we could place them in a Socialist country, and 90 miles from the United States; that´s one way to balance the nuclear stalemate.´ And so the decision was made. The missile crisis ensued. John F. Kennedy: Good evening my fellow citizens. This government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military build-up on the island of Cuba. Within the past week unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere. Keri Phillips: Ultimately all the Soviet missiles were withdrawn from Cuba and Kennedy agreed not to invade Cuba in the future. The resolution of the missile crisis was followed by a relatively stagnant period in US-Cuba relations. On the other hand, Cuba´s dependence on the Soviet Union increased. In 1965 Castro combined his organisations with the Communist Party and during the 1970s he began sending Cuban troops to support pro-Soviet forces in places like Angola and Ethiopia. However, Wayne Smith says there was another opportunity for dialogue with the US during the Carter Presidency. Wayne Smith: I at that point was in Buenos Aries, was called back to participate in these first talks with the Cubans and we agreed that we would open interest sections in one another´s capitals. I think the belief was, our expectation was, that we would move very quickly to rather normal relations. We would have disagreements but no more so than with some other countries. But again, Angola got in the way. As we opened these interest sections, it seemed that Cuban forces were withdrawing from Angola, the civil war there was winding down. But that didn´t happen and then the Cubans went into the Horn of Africa and the move towards reconciliation really broke down, and I would say has remained essentially broken until now. Let´s say Carter comes in, tries to begin a dialogue but it doesn´t work. There´s a moment in 1992 as Clinton is elected, and the Cold War is over now. The Soviet Union has collapsed; if we have been fearful of Cuba as a Soviet ally, that´s no longer the case. It did seem that there was a real possibility of normalisation. And before the elections I was assured (I was now back in Washington as a civilian, still following Cuban affairs however) I was assured by some of the assistants in Clinton´s campaign that if elected, he would change the Cuba policy, would move towards a more normal relationship. But that didn´t happen because Clinton went down to Miami, had dinner with some of the right-wing Cuban exiles, came out of the dinner with a cheque for $296,000 and said he liked the Cuba policy just as it was, in effect. And so we didn´t change policy, we continued on with the same sterile, useless hardline approach. Keri Phillips: There was also a very strong feeling in US policy circles that without Soviet aid - 6 or 7 billion dollars US, a year - the Cuban government might collapse. So what was the point in beginning talks with Castro? The fall of the USSR was indeed an economic disaster for Cuba and one for which many Cubans were not prepared. Sandra Levinson: I mean in all the years that I went to Cuba for example, I never, never saw the Soviet technicians, the Soviets who were in Cuba, at any social event with any Cubans. Ever. You know I mean let´s talk about hundreds of parties that I´ve gone to in my 300-plus trips to Cuba, and never a Soviet citizen at any of them. They maintained very separate lives in Cuba, they didn´t connect culturally, and they didn´t connect politically in a lot of ways. I think however, that if the Soviet Union had not been there to support the programs all those years, especially during the `70s and the `80s and the ´60, you know it was an absolutely necessary relationship and it was an enormous shock to a lot of the Cubans when the Soviet Union collapsed to realise how many of their programs had been supported by the Soviet Union because they really were so unaware of Soviets in Cuba that they felt, I think, deeply that they had made the revolution by their sweat, blood and tears, you know, and that all of the sacrifices and all of the volunteer work and all of the special programs and all of the ways in which people built housing, the micro brigades, the volunteer sugar brigades, everything, that that was what had made the revolution a success. And the economic reality of trading oil for sugar, of always maintaining the sugar price no matter whether it was high or low on the world market, things like that did not enter into the consciousness of even a lot of very intelligent Cubans. They were going about doing their work, whether it was as architects, as poets, as teachers of philosophy, you know, they didn´t really think about the fact that so much of their economy was based on the strength of the Soviet Union. So when the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba just went into a complete tailspin, I mean I think only a country like Cuba could have survived the `90s. Keri Phillips: Despite popular uprisings and the exodus of refugees to the US in the early `90s, Castro´s government survived the economic crisis and these days, instead of exchanging sugar for cheap oil with the Soviets, Cuba exchanges doctors for oil with Venezuela. Cuba remains a country without multi-party elections or press freedom, although it has free health care and education, including university education. The Castro era is undoubtedly drawing to an end, and it´s possible to weigh up some of the benefits and costs of the Cuban Revolution. Wayne Smith: Well I think the positive aspects have been that Castro has, if you will, put Cuba on the map. Cuba used to be regarded as a little Caribbean State where Americans went to get drunk on the weekends, have a good time, didn´t count for anything in the world. That changed. Cuba at some points over the past few decades, has almost seemed to play the role of a great power. It has been something of a power broker and I think its people have been rather proud of the position they´ve taken. Often positions that while the United States might oppose them, worked to the benefit of some very positive forces in the world. Nelson Mandela for example, in South Africa, someone we all I think admire, has said that had it not been for Fidel Castro and Fidel Castro´s interventions in Africa, that Africa would still be ruled by colonialist powers. I´m not sure that´s true but Nelson Mandela is convinced it is. I think in other ways Cuba has played a very positive role. Cuba now has almost 40,000 doctors overseas, giving assistance in countries around the world that - and many of them can´t afford it otherwise - they´re providing health care in many countries of the world and the Latin American Medical School gives an education to young people from all over the world who in many cases couldn´t afford it otherwise. So it has played a very positive role in many ways. On the other hand, Castro is not a democrat. I would describe Castro as an egalitarian. He believes that everyone should have an equal chance and no-one should live much better than anyone else. The idea of some people living in palaces and having huge cars and more than they can eat and cellars filled with champagne, is abhorrent to him. He believes that everyone should have enough to eat, everyone should have a decent place to live and so forth, but no-one a lot better than anyone else. So if you are a Cuban who has different tendencies, different ideas, you have been stymied. When you stymie dissent, when you stymie criticism, constructive criticism, the long term impact is not favourable to the country, and I think you can see that in Cuba. Sandra Levinson: `Newsweek´ magazine once called Cuba `Socialism with Salsa´. And I think it´s important to understand that Cuba is not in any way a grim place. I remember when I first went there, I thought to myself, well I remember going on the plane from Mexico to Havana, and I had to admit to myself something. I said, `I´ll probably really admire what they´re trying to do, but I wouldn´t want to live there.´ Because my idea of socialism was kind of grey, everyone thinking alike, everyone acting alike, government control of everything. Cuba is nothing like that, and never has been. You know, it has a spirit and a feistiness and an argumentativeness that I think we can credit Fidel with to a great extent because he had so many arguments with himself, and he was so articulate about the kind of society they were building, that it allowed people to either agree or disagree or somewhere in between, but it created a lot of energy. Keri Phillips: Sandra Levinson, Executive Director of the Center for Cuban Studies in New York. We also heard Dr Wayne Smith from the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C. The sound engineer for Rear Vision is Jenny Parsonage. I´m Keri Phillips. read less
2008-08-03 No more than one
Sat August 02 2008
The Beijing Olympics begin on Sunday 8 August and China is tipped to be the big medal winner. China's athletes are well trained and well supported but, perhaps even more importantly, many of them will be the product of China's one child policy. Since its introduction in 1979 it has transformed Chinese society and Chinese families. We take a look at the 30-year history of China's one child policy. TRANSCRIPT: Annabelle Quince: Welcome to Rear Vision on ABC Radio National with me Annabelle Quince. This week, the story of China´s one-child policy. Reporter: The only children come out to play, each accompanied by a doting parent or grandparent. It´s not just the health professionals and family planners who are striving to improve what they call `population quality´. Urban parents too are typically determined that their one little blessing will want for no physical or material good. Accustomed to being the centre of attention and getting their own way, children of this generation are already nicknamed The Little Emperors and Empresses. Annabelle Quince: This Friday the Olympics open in Beijing and China is fielding its largest team ever. Like many nations, China has invested heavily in its athletes, but what makes its team unique is not its training or its size, but rather the fact that many of the athletes, especially those from urban areas, are the product of China´s one-child policy. In 1979 in an effort to curb its growing population, China implemented a one child per family policy; today with this generation of only children coming of age, and about to compete in the Olympics, we thought it was a good time for Rear Vision to take a look at the history of the one-child policy. SINGING Annabelle Quince: Historically, Chinese families had around five or six kids. This began to change in 1949 when the People´s Republic of China was established and the communist government made birth control programs and abortions freely available. Wang Feng is the Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine, and the invited professor at the Fudan University in Shanghai, China. Wang Feng: People genuinely think that Mao opposed family planning, which actually is not true. Mao was not a public advocate for population control for political reasons, and he believed that population size or growth was not a determining factor for history, but he always supported family planning programs within China and so that´s why in cities, induced abortion was legalised in the early 1950s and it was practiced throughout the history of the People´s Republic and family planning city-wide adverts, or country-wide adverts were in existence as early as in the early 1960s. Annabelle Quince: So when did the actual issue of population and control of population become an issue in China? Wang Feng: I think it really emerged as a pressing issue during the 1970s, and then it had really got escalated at the end of the 1970s. Now in the 1970s I think what happened was people realised the rapid population growth rate and then the rapid increase in population size, largely because not because people were having more children, it was because more people were getting married and because of the spectacular decline in mortality. Life expectancy increased by about 50% from 40 years or so to about 60 years in a matter of less than 2 decades. So when mortality dropped, especially infant and child mortality dropped drastically, suddenly there were more people to survive. So in the `70s population control became a recognised national issue, and starting I think from 1973 the government openly advocated a policy which is called Wan Chi Chau. `Wan´ means `late marriage´; `Chi´ is `sparse´, long birth interval; `Chau´ means `fewer number of children´. But that was very different from what happened at the end of the 1970s. Susan Greenhalgh: Many people, including Chinese specialists believed that things would have been much better off if the government had stuck with that policy of the 1970s. That´s called The Later Longer Fewer policy. Annabelle Quince: Susan Greenhalgh is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of several books on birth control in China. Susan Greenhalgh: It was amazing in the 1970s, the fertility rate, the average number of kids per woman fell from just over 6 to just over 3, it´s just an astonishing fertility decline. And that was partly because people just didn´t want as many kids as they were having, and before that time, there were no modern contraceptives available to them. Annabelle Quince: So explain where the idea of the one child policy, because I can understand the idea of maybe trying to decrease population but the actual notion, how did they come up with the figure that each couple should only have one child? Susan Greenhalgh: Well there´s a really interesting story. Way back in the late 1970s because China had essentially abolished the field of population studies back in the late `50s and early `60s, around the time that Deng and the other reform leaders wanted to get the economy back on track. There were no functioning population specialists anywhere in China. So the government authorised the build-up of a new group of population specialists, and there emerged actually three different groups of population specialists. There were two groups of social scientists and they argued for a go-slow policy. But there was a third group of population specialists with a background in natural science. They were defence researchers, and they were cyberneticists, specialists in control theory, and they encountered some really interesting work in the West, it´s called the Club of Rome School, and anybody who was around in the late `60s and `70s can surely remember Paul Ehrlich´s population bomb. But long story short, this group of military scientists in China discovered this work, and they began trying their hand at population research. They did some projections on what the future growth of the population would be and of course it showed that even with a policy of two children, population would just balloon over the next few decades and keep on growing. And what their research seemed to show was only a one-child policy for everybody implemented immediately would keep the population from growing to astronomical sizes. And the size behind the one-child policy was very problematic. For one thing, nobody had any data on the Chinese population at that time, yet the leadership believed that this was just a wonderfully scientific approach to population control, and they were persuaded in part because of the sense in mathematics, none of which they themselves could understand, and finally they were persuaded because the patron of this group of newly-made population researchers was one of the very top scientists in the country. So there just was a lot of prestige associated with these names, and it seemed to solve China´s population problems, so they just thought they would give it a try. And in September 1980 the party issued what´s called The Open Letter, Open Letter from the Central Committee of the Party to all party members, calling on everybody to restrict themselves to one child. Reporter: The factory hospital is the nerve centre of the family planning project. Births, abortions, sterilisations, all take place right here on the factory premises. Yang Chen: This kind of policy, one-child policy, can only be implemented in China in the 1970s. Annabelle Quince: Dr Yang Chen is a second child born in China just before the introduction of the one-child policy. She is a lecturer in contemporary Chinese studies at the Centre for East Asian Studies, at the University of Bristol, England. Yang Chen: I argue that because back in the 1970s China was a very different country. At that time, the majority of the Chinese living in urban China, like my parents, their life was tied up to that State system. Eighty percent of China´s GDP actually was contributed by State-owned companies. So there was no private business in China, everything was owned and controlled by the State. The State provided what we called `cradle to coffin´ welfare service to all its employees. So your life, think of it this way, you life for example my father, he worked for the university, so his political life in terms of the chance you can get promotion in his creative development, also his basic necessities rely on the State system. So everything in his life is tied up with the government. This actually provided foundation for the State to introduce such a rigid policy at the time. Reporter: Lee She Ping is a foot soldiers in China´s family planning army, one of 300,000 enforces. The Hi family have broken the rules. Lee She Ping refuses to go into the house and comes straight to the point. The family owes her a fine, but they pretend the boy is a visiting nephew. Translator: If every family is like you and fails to carry out the policy, then what? Reporter: She warns the Hi´s that if they don´t pay their fine, she can confiscate their property. Susan Greenhalgh: In the early years even though the party had decided to no longer use Maoist methods, those were the only methods that could be used to carry out this draconian policy. So in the first few years, they relied heavily on Maoist mobilisation of campaigns, and these are rather frightening affairs, in which for a period of about three months, the whole population is mobilised to achieve particular goals, and then during the one-child policy period of goals were things like number of sterilisations and of abortions and of IUD insertions because basically they were trying to encourage women to use contraception so they wouldn´t have any more children. But it was carried on in a very, very ferocious way, and you know, the party tried very hard not to use physical force, they used economic incentives and social and political pressure, but still many, many couples wanted more children than they were allowed. So in the end the party had to rely on using force. And the result was just a disaster. There was a major, major nationwide sterilisation campaign in 1983, and the result was just terrible violence in the countryside with people killing their baby girls and couples attacking local officials, and the party had to back down after that. Reporter: Changeshe and her husband Wang Lin Chin who also works at the factory, are waiting for their baby permit. They take both the bureaucracy and the policy for granted. Translator: Of course to more children would be nice. To have a girl and a boy. Just having one is a bit far, not as much fun as having more. But that´s not national policy. We abide by national policy. Yang Chen: For my parents´ generation, for many of them they genuinely believe that there was a great future for the country and this great future can only be achieved, only be attained by sacrificing individual will and individual want. So the State and the country need it, but the individual, for many, they didn´t want it. So there must be a terrible conflict for many individuals at that time. And for that generation when they face such kind of conflict, they made a choice. I would say they made a choice; lots of people argue that was the State forcing the people to accept this policy? In many cases, yes, but there are also for many people at the time, the genuine belief that what they do contributes to the development of the nation so they accepted the policy. MUSIC Annabelle Quince: Because of the resistance to the policy, especially in the rural areas, the government began to allow exceptions. In the rural areas families were allowed two children if their first child was a girl. Susan Greenhalgh: After the government relaxed the policy a bit in 1984, then people began to have the babies that they had wanted all along. Then fertility began to rise in 1986, ´87, and on to the 1980s, and then the government became alarmed that the relaxation had gone too far, and so then there was another major crackdown in the early 1990s. After that, fertility fell to 1.8 which is astonishing because in places like the US now fertility´s about 2.0, 2.1 and in Western Europe currently you have fertility rates of 1.3 to 1.6 so Chinese fertility at 1.8 it was down to the level of the industrialised countries. So that was an astonishing achievement, if you want to call it that. And fertility has stayed at that level and even fallen since then. Of course I think that that has a lot to do with China´s rapid integration in the global economy and the marketisation in the economy and what those factors have done has greatly increased the cost of raising kids. And of course the State, you know the socialist State has retreated from providing support for education, social welfare, so Chinese families now have to pay for more and more of the costs of rearing kids on their own. And kids just as they are throughout the West, kids in China are very, very expensive to raise. At the same time the standards for raising kids have gone up, up, up, so these days everybody wants their child to at least graduate from college and ideally go to university abroad, get an advanced degree. So these things especially good health and good education require a lot of money, so people want fewer and fewer children. Wang Feng: Right now the estimate is 140-million single children, that´s a size larger than the total population of Japan, and it´s increasing at a rate of 10-milliion people per year, 10-million more single children per year. So when these children all reach their adult age or older age, they are going to have a significant impact on the Chinese kinship and family structure. So the children of these single children will not have uncles, aunts, and these people will not have cousins, brothers, sisters of course, but that´s something that no human society has ever experienced. Now about two months ago when China had the horrendous earthquake, and it was noticed that a lot of the families lost their only children. So these single-children families are high risk families. So that´s something I think it´s going to play out in the future even more. Susan Greenhalgh: This is one of the most transformative policies in all of contemporary China. Certainly as important as the switch to marketisation in the economy, and interestingly, most of these effects haven´t been studied, and it could be because they´re just now working their way through the system. But what we do know is there´s been a major loss of little girls from the population. The demographers talk about that in terms of a rising sex ratio at birth and currently the number of - there are 120 boys born per 100 girls born, and that´s countrywide. If you look at the poorer areas of the country, there are places where there are four boys to two girls, three boys to two girls. So there´s a horrible problem of missing girls. A related problem of course is that young men are having difficulty finding brides, and again it´s not the urban man, it´s the poor and poorly educated rural men who are having trouble. So what they´re having to do is import brides from abroad, that is the people who live near like Korea in the north and Vietnam in the South. Gosh, they´re forming bachelor communities of people who can´t marry, there´s a really serious problem of large numbers of Chinese men who actually won´t be able to marry at all. On the individual side, you have good and bad effects. And the bad effects we´ve all read about is the kind of Little Emperor syndrome where many of these kids they´ve just been spoiled rotten and you can imagine the two parents and four grandparents doting on one child whether it´s a girl or boy, that child has everything money will buy. And there are lots of reports of single children being very self-centred, not very willing to share their things, not able to care for themselves because others have cared for them for so long. They simply don´t have very well-developed social skills. On the more positive side, because so much energy and money has been invested in the education and the health of this generation of single children, you have the best educated and probably most healthy generation of young people in all of Chinese history, and these young people especially in the cities where almost every child is a single child, they are very cosmopolitan, very technologically savvy, have at least Bachelors degrees if not advanced degrees, very, very competitive and for sure they will help to make China´s labour force much more competitive on the world scene as time goes by. Yang Chen: One of the problems is that when the government introduced the policy by the end of the 1970s, there was a State Welfare system, the State basically provided everything from cradle to coffin to State employees, but after 30 years of economic reform, this system was already knocked down. So there was very limited security provided by the State to the people after their age. So people felt that they had to rely more on their children. But the trouble is now the average household, they have only one child and the burden on the shoulders of that one child will be huge. He has to look after his parents and his grandparents from the mother´s side, his grandparents from his father´s side, so one child has to support altogether six people. So obviously, economically, this is not sustainable. So that left you the multiplication of the one-child policy in recent years. Now the Chinese government introduced a new policy, allowed for a household, if husband and wife are the only child in their family, after they form a new family, they are allowed to have more than one child. And also there´s another economic consequence associated with this policy, that is the supply of labour and the way the Chinese economy over the past 30 years has been fuelled by almost the abundant supply of cheap labour, and obviously this abundant supply of cheap labour may not sustain in the next decade or two because there will be less people available in the labour market. Wang Feng: First of all the policy has no future. It needs to be phased out, but it needs to be phased out not only very promptly, quickly, but also responsibly. It was an emergency policy and it was never meant to be a policy that´s going to be here forever. Now practically, as with any policy, with any political augmentation, once they´re born they start to have a life of their own. The good way to look at this is to use a Chinese metaphor: it´s easier to mount a tiger than to dismount. Once you are on the tiger it´s really hard how to get off it. Yang Chen: It´s very interesting. Last Saturday I listened to the BBC there was a program talking about the school of family planning at University College, London. A group of researchers absolutely argue that in Britain or the British households, need to think about birth control, think about family planning as part of their efforts to reduce their ecological footprint. So obviously as the world we are in now, we face strain on the ecosystem; I would say there is a rationale for such a kind of policy to be carried on, and we also know there are similar programs promoted by the United Nations Population Fund. So obviously we do need - I´m talking about from the Chinese perspective - a policy like this to actually control the size of the population. But the question is, how to implement this policy. Can this policy be implemented exactly the same way as it was enforced in the `70s and the `80s? I would argue very unlikely, because today China is a much open and liberal society, and people could have their own choices. So these days I would say we do need in China to have a broader social debate on this issue, and then try to find out a fine balance between the need of the State and the nation, between the collective need of the State and nation, and the protection of civil liberty. So that´s a challenge to the Chinese government and also a challenge to the Chinese people. We do need to make our own efforts to find a balance. It´s a difficult task but that´s the only way out. Susan Greenhalgh: I´m sure that the State will take every advantage of the Olympics because to the extent that there are young athletes competing and they probably will. After all, the first generation of single children is about 25, in their mid-20s now, so many of the athletes will probably be around that age. But the government will take every advantage to use it to show off some of the results of the one-child policy. MUSIC Annabelle Quince: Today´s guests were Wang Feng, Susan Greenhalgh, and Yang Chen. With archival material from the BBC and ABC´s `Foreign Correspondent´. Jenny Parsonage was the sound engineer and this is Rear Vision. I´m Annabelle Quince, thanks for your company. MUSIC read less
